French law Loppsi 2 under debate again

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Deutsch: [Neue Debatte über französisches Loppsi 2 Gesetz | http://www.unwatched.org/node/2442]

The so-called Loppsi 2 draft law (loi d’orientation et de programmation pour
la performance de la sécurité intérieure – law on guidelines and programming
for the performance of internal security) is being discussed these days in
the French General Assembly in second reading, after having been approved by
the Senate in September 2010.

The National Assembly is continuing the long and controversial debate on the
draft text which might allow the blocking, at the level of ISPs, of websites
considered by the authorities as undesirable, without judiciary control and
which may give the police authority to install spyware on PCs, without the
users’ knowledge and without having to justify their actions.

Article 4 of the text referring to the blocking of child pornography sites
is considered as a Trojan horse. The concerns are that the filtering may be
extended to other types of sites out of political reasons as it happened
with FNAEG (Fichier National Automatisé des Empreintes Génétiques –
Automated National File of Genetic Prints) which started initially by
gathering the DNA data of sexual criminals and ended up in containing the
DNAs of more than 1,5 million people.

Many organizations (even child protection ones) have expressed several times
the idea that, while supporting the fight against child pornography sites,
they also believed that the measures proposed by the French government were
disproportionate and most of all inefficient.

La Quadrature du Net has brought as example the attempts to forbid the
hosting of Wikileaks in France. “This shocking maneuver is a new
demonstration of the government’s will to by-pass the legal authority in
order to play the Internet police in contempt of the fundamental rights. The
child protection pretext is only a means for the political power to
establish a filtering infrastructure for the information on the net” stated
the organization.

The organisations belonging to CLEJ (Collectif Liberté Egalité Justice –
Collective for Freedom, Equality and Justice), warn over the fact that the
draft text “reveals a political line that is particularly worrying:
databases, surveillance, control, detention!”
The group is worried by the increased surveillance and believes that “in
France the goal is to increase the spying of public space to the maximum:
the authorities will be able to place video-surveillance devices practically
everywhere in public spaces.”

After going through the National Assembly, the text will go back to the
Senate at the beginning of 2011. According to Gérard Larcher, President of
French Senate the debate next year will be difficult and “fierce”.

LOPPSI 2: not in our name ! Statement by CLEJ which is open for signatures
(only in French, 2.12.2010)
http://clej.blog.free.fr/index.php?post/2010/LOPPSI-2-pas-en-notre-nom

Loppsi 2, custody, Immigration: Larcher predicted “difficulties” in the
Senate (only in French, 9.12.2010)
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hCLMdWXRYQzs0gMGCkTeCcY3w3nQ?docId=CNG.4f248d6e99e453a5310760a81af36c0b.321

LOPPSI examan delayed, probably towards late December (only in French, 23.11.2010)
http://www.numerama.com/magazine/17417-l-examen-de-la-loppsi-repousse-probablement-a-fin-decembre.html

Wikileaks, possible target of Loppsi ? (only in French, 9.12.2010)
http://www.numerama.com/magazine/17568-wikileaks-cible-potentielle-de-la-loppsi.html

EDRi-gram: Blocking websites approved by the French Senate (22.09.2010)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number8.18/french-law-loppsi-2-senate